Agency in the Margins: Stories of Outside Ehetoric PDF
Preview Agency in the Margins: Stories of Outside Ehetoric
Agency in the Margins .................17316$ $$FM 10-29-0908:52:47 PS PAGE1 .................17316$ $$FM 10-29-0908:52:47 PS PAGE2 Agency in the Margins Stories of Outsider Rhetoric Edited by Anne Meade Stockdell-Giesler Madison•Teaneck FairleighDickinsonUniversity Press .................17316$ $$FM 10-29-0908:52:47 PS PAGE3 (cid:2)2010byRosemontPublishing&PrintingCorp. Allrightsreserved.Authorizationtophotocopyitemsforinternalorpersonaluse,or theinternalorpersonaluseofspecificclients,isgrantedbythecopyrightowner,pro- videdthatabasefeeof$10.00,pluseightcentsperpage,percopyispaiddirectlyto the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachusetts 01923.[978-0-8366-4214-6/10$10.00(cid:3)8¢pp,pc.] AssociatedUniversityPresses 2010EastparkBoulevard Cranbury,NJ08512 ThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstherequirementsoftheAmericanNational StandardforpermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibraryMaterials Z39.48-1984 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Agencyinthemargins:storiesofoutsiderrhetoric/editedbyAnneMeadeStockdell- Giesler. p. cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-0-8386-4214-6(alk.paper) 1.Rhetoric—Politicalaspects—UnitedStates. 2.Rhetoric—Socialaspects— UnitedStates. 3.Rhetoric—UnitedStates—History. 4.Marginality,Social— UnitedStates. I.Stockdell-Giesler,AnneMeade,1967– P301.5.P67A44 2010 818.5(cid:2)108694—dc22 2009008223 printedintheunitedstatesofamerica .................17316$ $$FM 10-29-0908:52:47 PS PAGE4 Contents Introduction 9 Anne MeadeStockdell-Giesler FreedomofSpeechandthePoliticsof Silence:TheCaseof Ward Churchill 23 MichaelDonnelly RecoveringtheVoicesoftheFloridaTurpentineSlaves:A LostRhetoricofResistance 39 Linda BannisterandJamesE.Hurd,Jr. AHoleStory: TheSpaceofHistoricalMemoryinthe AbolitionistImagination 68 ZoeTrodd ‘‘Mirrorsofhard,distortingglass’’:Invisible ManasOutsider Rhetoric 91 IanEdwards HistoricalMoments,HistoricalWords:TheContinuing Legacyof MalcolmX’sBlackNationalistRhetoricandHuey P.NewtoninCommon’sRapMusic 119 CorettaPittman OutsiderRhetoricinItalian AmericanImmigrant Autobiographies 143 IlariaSerra ‘‘ToLiveOutsidetheLaw,YouMustBeHonest’’:Words, Walls,andtheRhetoricalPracticesof TheAngolite 165 ScottWhiddon ‘‘Protectyourselfatalltimes’’: MillionDollar Baby,Boxing, andFeminineAgency 197 IanEdwards 5 .................17316$ CNTS 10-29-0908:52:51 PS PAGE5 6 CONTENTS (Still)CallingOutfromtheCloset?:TheRhetoricof VisibilityinQueerTVandFilm 225 RebeccaIngalls Modernity BaptizedintheSpirit:EarlyPentecostalRhetoric inAmerica 241 JosephW.Williams Techno-MobMovements:PublicPerformancesandthe CollectiveVoicesofOutsiders 261 JessicaKetchamWeber StrategicEssentialismandtheRepresentationof theNatural: TheCaseof Ecofeminist/ScientistWangariMaathai 287 RaymondOenbring Conclusion 307 AnneMeade Stockdell-GieslerandRebeccaIngalls NotesonContributors 313 Index 316 .................17316$ CNTS 10-29-0908:52:51 PS PAGE6 Agency in the Margins 7 .................17316$ HFTL 10-29-0908:52:54 PS PAGE7 .................17316$ HFTL 10-29-0908:52:54 PS PAGE8 Introduction Anne Meade Stockdell-Giesler T HE WESTERN RHETORICAL TRADITION, AS WE KNOW IT, EXTENDS back at least 2,500 years to its roots in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. That tradition has long honored individual ora- tions delivered by men in privileged male-dominated forums such as the political office, the pulpit, and the marketplace. In recent years scholars have begun to look at individual oratorical performances by marginalized figures. Heated debates over who ‘‘owns’’ rhetoric and what consists of legitimate rhetorical performance have taken place. Scholarshaveputforththeoriesofrhetoricencompassingdiversesitu- ationsand exigencies. Whatwehavenotoffered,Iwouldcontend,isaninterpretationand theorizationoftherhetoricofoutsidergroupsasatypeorclassofrheto- ric. This collectionof essays studies the rhetoric ofOtherness and ex- plores how outsiders to mainstream sites for rhetorical participation find ways to make themselves heard while retaining marginal identi- ties. The question that this collection attempts to answer is: how do people who are defined as outsiders create agency—how do they be- come agents of change, of social, political, spiritual, and cultural power—outsideofthosespacesthatwetraditionallyunderstandasbe- longingtothepowerful? The subjects in this collection vary: authors discuss contemporary hip-hopmusic;earlytwentieth-centuryliterature;prisonpublications; post-Civil War treatment of ‘‘free’’ African Americans; queer culture; and more. The common thread in each essay is the study of how the groupshavemanagedtosuccessfullyuserhetorictoexertsocialpower and establish agency in a world that denies them privileged status. Eachofthesegroups’workhelpstoestablishaconstitutiverhetoricof otherness, a contribution to a genre of ‘‘Outsider Rhetoric’’ in which the rhetor(s) create a narrative in which they as subjects have legiti- macy as rhetors, and in which the audience then is reconstituted to perceive this legitimacy. As Maurice Charland points out, ‘‘much of what we as rhetorical critics consider to be a product or consequence of discourse, including social identity, religious faith, sexuality, and 9 .................17316$ INTR 10-29-0908:52:57 PS PAGE9 10 ANNE MEADE STOCKDELL-GIESLER ideology is beyond the realm of rational or even free choice, beyond the realm of persuasion’’;1 our rhetorical constructions in terms of who we are as rhetors and as audience members is prerhetorical, and mustbereconstitutedbyoutsiderstoourownknowngroupidentities should an outsider want to reach us. What the essays in this book at- tempttoilluminateareexamplesofoutsiderscreatingagencythrough constitutiverhetoricswhichattempttocreateanarrativeinwhichthe outsider has a legitimate right to speak; ‘‘narratives offer a world in which human agency is possible and acts can be meaningful.’’2 Addi- tionally, Charland argues, ‘‘one must already be an interpellated sub- ject and exist as a discursive position in order to be a part of the audience of a rhetorical situation in which persuasion could occur.’’3 Constitutive rhetoric serves to create communities of audiences—to define new boundaries and group-identities for rhetorical situations. This action is, of course, always tied up in concepts of power—and outsiders,bydefinition,arenotempowered. How the agents in each of the examples presented by these essays garners power varies; as Foucault explains in regard to discourse and powerrelations: We must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable . . . we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded dis- course, or between dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicityofdiscursiveelementsthatcancomeintoplayinvariousstrat- egies.Discoursesarenotonceandforallsubservienttopowerorraisedup againstit,anymorethansilencesare....Discoursetransmitsandproduces power;itreinforcesit,butalsounderminesandexposesit,rendersitfragile andmakesitpossibletothwartit.4 InthespiritofFoucault’s ideasaboutdiscourse,this bookattemptsto highlightthediscourseofmarginalizedgroupswhohavebeenconsid- eredsilenced,disenfranchised,orrhetoricallyunempowered,andhow they found place and access to create and disperse that discourse through constitutive rhetorics. The essays will perhaps undo the black-and-whitenotionsof‘‘mainstream’’and‘‘marginalized’’rhetor- icalethos and willinsteadfocuson theveryartof outsiderrhetoricin its complexity; after all, ‘‘a rhetoric to Athenians in praise of Athens would be relatively insignificant compared to a rhetoric that consti- tutesAtheniansas such.’’5 Theories of social-movement rhetoric may at first seem relevant here, and the spirit and intentions of individual rhetors discussed in this book may often be linked to those of social movement rhetorics. .................17316$ INTR 10-29-0908:52:57 PS PAGE10
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